In 2016 Acura showed off its "Precision Cockpit" concept that included a touchpad with 1:1 mapping to a central display. It's supposed to improve on both touchscreens, which can require an awkward reach from the driver to somewhere out of their line of sight, and existing remotes that try to copy a mouse-controlled UI. Now the company has announced that technology is coming to the 2019 RDX branded as a "True Touchpad." This Android-based car OS is the first use of a touchpad with absolute positioning in a car, making sure that wherever the driver taps on the pad corresponds to what is shown on the central 10.2-inch screen, which is mounted high up, in the driver's line of sight. Combined with a new natural language interface and an interactive heads-up display for the driver, it's supposed to be easier to use than any car software we've seen before. This upcoming version of Acura's luxury SUV has other changes as well, in a "top-to-bottom" remake that will launch around the middle of this year.

Welcome to The Morning Shift, your roundup of the auto news you crave, all in one place every weekday morning. Here are the stories you need to know for your next dinner party. For a couple years, the Morning Shift story at the beginning of every month was "Another month of record sales!" As the country recovered from the recession--or seemed to, anyway--all that pent-up demand resulted in booming new car sales for months on end. General Motors and Ford Motor Co., behind another weak month for cars, posted declines in U.S. sales for April in what is projected to be the fourth consecutive monthly decline for the industry and the longest losing streak since the market bottomed out in 2009.

As cars edge closer to driving themselves, it can seem they've already forgotten humans are still here and in control. It's not just that systems like lane centering, and collision avoidance often leap to action or lay passive without giving the human a beep of warning or explanation. As these systems advance and cars pick up more of the load while offering more distractions, these communication problems will only prove knottier. At the same time, increasingly advanced infotainment systems make it harder to keep your eyes on the road. Acura thinks it has found the solution to both problems.

Digital dials are great and all, but why not turn things up a notch? That's exactly what Acura is doing with its Precision Cockpit, unveiled at the LA Auto Show today. More than just an in-car infotainment system, the concept includes cabin elements borrowed from the NSX (such as the seats and the steering wheel), which show us just how future Acura motors will look and feel inside, along with how we'll interact with them. Acura's calling it a "choreographed in-car experience" (of course) and it appears that experience includes some clever technology. The centerpiece of the cockpit, for gadget fans, are the two 12.3-inch display panels.

The new fleet of self-driving cars has landed in Pittsburgh and is ready for the public via Uber X. Comma.ai SAN FRANCISCO -- Would you pay 999 to give your car self-driving chops? George Hotz is betting the answer is yes. The 26-year-old iPhone and PlayStation hacker turned entrepreneur is behind Comma.ai, a new Bay Area company that is powered largely by his brains and chutzpah, as well as 3 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz. "It is fully functional, and about on par with Tesla Autopilot."

Comma.ai founder George Hotz, who promises to ship a 999 self-driving car aftermarket package by the end of the year. SAN FRANCISCO - Would you pay 999 to give your car self-driving chops? George Hotz is betting the answer is yes. The 26-year-old iPhone and PlayStation hacker turned entrepreneur is behind Comma.ai, a new Bay Area company that is powered largely by his brains and chutzpah, as well as 3 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz. "It is fully functional, and about on par with Tesla Autopilot."

George Hotz, the latest Silicon Valley startup founder to get a multimillion-dollar check from venture capitalists, went for a ride in a Rolls-Royce around San Francisco on Monday. At 26, Hotz thinks he could teach the legendary vehicle a few tricks. Braking should be smoother, he says. The vehicle should run each time as if the best limo driver in the world was behind the wheel. "You don't want the champagne to spill," Hotz says.

A few days before Thanksgiving, George Hotz, a 26-year-old hacker, invites me to his house in San Francisco to check out a project he's been working on. He says it's a self-driving car that he had built in about a month. But when I turn up that morning, in his garage there's a white 2016 Acura ILX outfitted with a laser-based radar (lidar) system on the roof and a camera mounted near the rearview mirror. A tangle of electronics is attached to a wooden board where the glove compartment used to be, a joystick protrudes where you'd usually find a gearshift, and a 21.5-inch screen is attached to the center of the dash. "Tesla only has a 17-inch screen," Hotz says. He's been keeping the project to himself and is dying to show it off. Hotz fires up the vehicle's computer, which runs a version of the Linux operating system, and strings of numbers fill the screen. When he turns the wheel or puts the blinker on, a few numbers change, demonstrating that he's tapped into the Acura's internal controls. After about 20 minutes of this, and sensing my skepticism, Hotz decides there's really only one way to show what his creation can do. "Screw it," he says, turning on the engine. As a scrawny 17-year-old known online as "geohot," Hotz was the first person to hack Apple's iPhone, allowing anyone--well, anyone with a soldering iron and some software smarts--to use the phone on networks other than AT&T's.